I have seen some of you gangsta tricksters busting the flat back loop off the cartwheel bounce. Monkey See Monkey Do and I am very close but I cant get a good bow re-entry. I want to bust this trick real bad and I need some words of wisdom...

The only words of wisdom I have for you are not to seal launch into green water and land flat in a playboat. Unless of course you want to never have to use contraception again Otherwise, good luck with the flatwater back loop. Cool picture

Nathan you bugger! I was going to post that same reply earlier and then had to go out.. Yep, my words of wisdom too. Seal launches might be fun but don't land flat from such a height, unless you want to hurt/paralyze yourself.. Good luck with the flat water backloop. Not an easy move and mostly only possible if you're paddling a boat way too small for you. Well, thats from the video clips I've seen.

haha thanks for the advice, I do have a tendency of learning the hard way, but the seal had to launch on that day

are there any videos?

hey Adrian,
Do you guys get to the ocean very often?
What ocean breaks do you guys surf your elements down there? J-Bay, Durban...?

Hi Kell,

Yeah the Element is awesome in the surf. I stay in Cape Town so LOADS of world class breaks around:

www.wavescape.co.za/top_bar/spots/capetown.html

There are some really advanced spots too like:
www.wavescape.co.za/top_bar/spots/capetown/Pages/dungeons.htm

www.wavescape.co.za/top_bar/spots/capetown/Pages/outerkom.html

www.wavescape.co.za/top_bar/spots/capetown/Pages/factory.htm

I've only hit the Element a couple of times and then had to stop. The boat is amazing though. Super fast and is more loose than anything I've ever paddled. In exactly a week from now, I'll be undergoing some surgery on my shoulder. But I'll be out there, getting some photos this season as the winter swell can get huge. I took this pic of Rowan Walpole on a small day at Muizenberg. That day, there was a decent 18 foot swell on the western side of Cape Town but so much mist one couldn't even the damn waves... But soon... Rowan paddles almost everyday, lucky man! After they put humpty dumpty back together I'll be hitting it extra hard.

haha yeah dungeons is pretty massive, its only a matter of time until kayakers start stepping it up in the xxl surf. Bummer to hear about the broken wing, i know exactly how it goes. Good luck on a swift recovery!!

Yeah Dungeons is HUGE. The funny thing is, it's been 'kayaked' already by a crazy French dude that lives here in Cape Town. Awesome dude, met him the other day. He did it in a homemade, sit on top kayak!!! He made two sessions of roughly an hour and a half, catching a few waves. The last attempt broke the bow off when it dived, then the lip landed on the tail and snapped the tail off and then his paddle bust across his chest. He was rescued by jet ski as is standard practise to avoid death. Not many people have the balls for that wave even on surf boards... So let's see if he makes a longer sit in kayak as he has made loads of his own boats already but they're full on play boats.

haha what? charging that on a sit on top would be arguably suicidal in my eyes

personally I want to try and tow into some big swell with a wave sport flyer or something, If a kayaker could ever style some gigantic waves like that it would be insane. Tha wipeouts would be harsh though

You'd need a very long boat for that. Not sure the Flyer could do it. You would need zero wind too and that will be tough... Yep, wipe outs would be harsh. Ollie is a hardcore dude, building his own carbon/kelvar boats entirely on his own, usually normal sit inside kayaks. He doesn't even believe in a back rest and paddles rapids like #9 on the Zambezi with ease.. The day for kayakers to surf BIG waves like that is coming. Let's hope there are no Mark Foo incidents though.

I don't mean to be pessimistic here, guys; but I don't think a kayaker will ever be able to surf anything like Teahupoo -Chopu (sp) or Jaws, or even Dungeons. This is because we don't have the ability to absorb shock like surfers can with their legs, especially on massive waves where wind creates such a bumpy ride. We also cannot generate nearly as much speed as surfers do, so fast breaks like Chopu and Cray Fish Factory are a no go.

Ofcourse, I stand to be corrected. I love surfing big waves, Nahoon Reef in East London on a big day is pure heaven.

Peace,
Scotty R.

(p.s shouldn't we make this a new thread because big wave surfing is quite far off flat-water back loops?)

Teahupoo has been kayaked already, more than once:

Quite a crap video but somebody told me they saw a great video of Nigel Foster kayaking it. That wave is hard to really compare to most other waves as it is fairly unique. Pipeline comes close, is faster, but the lip isn't so thick. They're both about a metre deep so wiping out is BAD news..

Arnd Schaeftlein tried to kayak Jaws but it was always too windy. He did manage some huge waves in Maui so Dungeons is quite possible... (in the DVD Wehyakin)

Neil Baxter tried Jaws. Not sure what happened with that:

findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is...23/ai_n12735152/pg_1

playak.com/article.php?sid=423
playak.tv/view_video.php?viewkey=cee61a5...detailed&category=mr
(getting a bit off-topic here though. this was supposed to be about back-floops...)

Oh well... Back loops in a hole are much easier. On flat water....

Ades, that is hardly Chopu at its biggest and Dungeons gets up to 70ft faces, in fact it one biggest wave of the year in 2006 (www.wavescape.co.za/top_bar/tidings/Bigw...B_Awards/XXL2007.htm)

It is my opinion obviously, I don't mean to start an argument. I would love to see it but I just don't see happening realistically in the near future.

I think that its impossible for us to likely surf waves like pipe and teahpuo when its maxing theres no way that we could maneuver through those heavy hollow tubes without certain death. But i think waves like Waimea Bay, dungeons, even Peahi ("jaws", which was surfed by a body boarder who even paddled in). As long as you can match the speed of the wave, I dont think you would need a yak over 7 feet. So it is definitely far more feasible...we shall see in the near future!
sorry this turned off topic

I see where you are coming from. However, I stand by my original comment when saying that we can't absorb shock like surfers (& bodyboarders - who use there arms) do and that makes it difficult on really big waves for any kayak. Especially the likes of Jaws, Dungeons or any deep water reef that rely on big winds ontop of the swell to get going. I also think people underestimate just how big Dungeons is, I live with a guy who surfs there every year and, I tell you, it is big:woohoo: .
Despite all that I still strive to surf as big a wave as I can handle and it is great fun. LifeByWater.com are planning a tow in session at Nahoon Reef in the near future. I'll let you know how successful that goes:)

Kell wrote:

("jaws", which was surfed by a body boarder who even paddled in).

I clearly remember Morey building the launch vehicle specifically for big waves. It was Mike Stewart who was the first person to bodyboard jaws.
[img]http://kai_surf.tripod.com/1046c720.gif[/img]

Body flat down on the board. Not much absorbing. I've bodyboarded enough and the absorption from the arms is not much. Probably the same as bending along ones' back. I've seen the footage of him doing it on his first run many years ago and it was a super bumpy ride. But he did it and has done it several times.

Ollie Feluette made two sessions at Dungeons, each of about an hour and a half on a homemade sit on top. Only once did he really come short and the boat broke in three pieces. It was a big day... Just wait till someone has the balls again. It will happen soon.

Well, as I said I stand to be corrected. My original objections though were with big wave surfing - 50ft+ .
The guy I live with is a bodyboarder and here are his thoughts:

For bodyboarders (one word) huge amounts of absorption is taken in by the arms. This is especially apparent when riding big waves. Anyone willing to claim otherwise has a rather naive experience of the sport. Imagine bouncing down the face of even a 20ft wind blown moster at dungeons. Were it not for the absorptive capability allowed by one's arms any bodyboarder would be instantly thrown into the water for a very horrible experience. Watch any video of riding big waves in any sport: big waves are characterised by a vast fetch of a wind system that generated the gigantic swell. This vast fetch would have to be coupled with extreme wind strength. These two factors coupled together result in swells that are extremly bumpy as they hit any deep sea reef. Arms allow a bodyboarder to make the drop at the intended frequency in order to match up to the chop of the wave. Essentially, when you see a bodyboarder riding a dungeons wave smoothly, it is only because his arms allowed him to absorb the initial drop and hence make the rest of the ride smooth. What i am trying to say is that until a kayaker embraces the requirement for some sort of shock absorbing aparatus, the likelyhood of riding 40ft dungeons safely is very very low. The idea of a hydro-foil comes to mind

Right, so that was my digsmate who is a sponsored bodyboarder and experienced big wave rider. I often hit breaks with him and there are times where waves just get too heavy for me in a kayak. Now, I hope you can see my concerns rather than it being pessimism. I say that because I would love to tackle something like dungeons but I am aware of what can go wrong - and the biggest hurdle (in my opinion and many others) is absorbing shock.
Despite what I've said the biggest waves I've seen a kayaker surf is from the DVD Aerated with the lads in Indonesia - those are big - so its definitly possible to surf some monsters in a kayak, just not the stuff they're doing in the Billabong XXL.

Happy paddling,
Scotty R

haha this is my last "I disagree"!
I think it's really all depends on the wave fetch and shape. Obviously what kayaker is gonna go try and pull into a house size barrel at puerto escondido. But I am super confident that we can tow and make some of the xxl waves on the RIGHT conditions, while maintaing smaller boat size just like surfers.

I love surfing so much that I would never even use a kayak unless it was too big, and there was a channel servicing the break.

Batayak wrote:

are there any videos?

playak.tv/view_video.php?viewkey=d5072bb...iewtype=&category=mr